Letter to the Editor: no response

By RONALD J. SHAWOrem

Editor,

We have not received a single adequate response from any of our Utah Republican members of Congress pertaining to our endeavors to get cosponsors for HR 3474 and S2065, the Keep Our Promise to America's

Military Retirees Act.

I am the Utah Coordinator for the retired military's national Class Action Group (CAG) who are trying to get congressional action passed on this bill. We are unified with a tremendous number of members, many of them being here in Utah. With family, friends, and, sympathizers, we have formed a good, solid, voting block. With that in mind, it would appear to me that they could at least respond with their views, and hopefully their support, to this very important endeavor to restore some of our lost military veterans benefits. The feeling within the CAG is that if they cannot support us, or at least give us justifiable reasons why not, we cannot support them.

We hear a lot about budget constraints. Budgetary constraints, however, are not justifiable reasons when too many of us have paid too dearly with dedicated service and its resultant physical and mental hardships, and long family separations, for our country's freedom. We certainly did not do this for fun, or just for the pay, but most certainly, as professionals, we did it for "Duty, Honor, Country."

We are not asking for anything more than that which was promised to us by our Government. We need our elected representatives to step forward and ensure that those promises are kept. If they cannot do this, then we need to elect those who can.